The invention relates to a composition for the preparation of artificial calf milk, which composition in addition to carbohydrates, also contains lactoproteins, vegetable protein and fat.
Such compositions were already developed due to the increasing shortage of skimmed milk powder that in the present artificial calf milk compositions usually forms the source of the lactoproteins. These present compositions have in addition to skimmed milk powder, a vegetable or animal fat that replaces the expensive butter fat. Thought has been given to partially or wholly replacing the skimmed milk powder by other products derived from by-products from the milk industry. Such by-products are whey powder, lactose-poor whey powder or protein-rich whey powder, caseinate, and whey-protein concentrate. Here there are also sometimes problems relating to the supply or the quality of the product.
For this reason efforts have been made to partially or wholly replace the skimmed milk powder or the lactoproteins in general by other proteins. From there that an extensive series of vegetable and animal proteins, which are suitable for replacing the lactoproteins and more especially those derived from the skimmed milk powder in a artificial calf milk composition, have been described in literature. Such proteins are: fish protein, potato protein, soya concentrate and isolate, alfalfa protein concentrate and proteins derived from leguminosae.
All these replacement proteins show one or several disadvantages in relation to the lactoprotein. These disadvantages are, among others, a limited solubility. When the composition is placed in water for the formation of the artificial calf milk an unstable suspension is obtained. This problem can only be solved by adding expensive stabilizers. With the utilization of soya proteins the presence of anti-nutritional factors leads to diarrhea, decreased digestibility and increased intestinal wall permeability.
The relatively high iron content in certain proteins is disadvantageous with the feeding of fattening calves since they give the veal a darker color and white veal is favored by the consumer.
The digestibility of vegetable proteins is clearly lower than that of lactoproteins such as those which are derived from milk powder and whey powder. Thus the digestibility of soya concentrate amounts to 70-88%, of potato protein 82% and of partially hydrolyzed corn proteins 86%. These values are valid for calves of between four and fifteen weeks. For these calves the lactoprotein digestibility amounts to 94-98%. Replacement of lactoprotein by other proteins until now lead to a reduction in weight increase of the calves. This weight increase varied with the age of the animals but also with the percentage of lactoprotein that was replaced. Thus with utilization of soya protein that replaced 33% of the lactoprotein, weight increases were recorded which were 10 to 20% lower than when all protein consisted of lactoprotein.
It is further known that these replacement proteins do not coagulate or block in the fourth stomach, as is the case with lactoprotein. This leads to an accelerated evacuation from the gastrointestinal tract of both the protein and the fat and therefore to a reduced digestibility and decreased growth.
It was in general recorded that the negative influence on the growth of the animals becomes significant, when the replacement protein reaches 25 to 50 weight-% of the total protein present. This value is dependent upon the nature of the protein and upon the technological treatment to which it has been subjected. The utilization of these replacement proteins is extensively discussed by J. L. Troccon and R. Toullec in INRA Prod. Anim. 1989,2(2), 117-128.